A 57-year-old man found guilty of tying up and blindfolding a woman before raping her in a Ballarat grandstand will spend at least six years in jail.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Paul Walter Smith, who was 47 at the time, was at the oval’s grandstand with the woman at 11pm on February 7, 2009, when he told her he had a surprise for her.
He placed a neck tie around her eyes before he ‘felt her up’ and touched her breasts from behind. He then tied her arms up behind her back.
Smith placed another tie tightly around the woman’s head with the tie inside her mouth before he pushed her down on a seat, pulled her underpants down and sexually penetrated her.
Smith turned the woman over and put his penis on her mouth, while she said, ‘no’. He then anally penetrated the blindfolded woman before the ties were removed.
The shocked woman said later she “couldn’t do anything and just put up with it and waited until it was over”.
A County Court jury agreed with her evidence she did not consent to the sex and found him guilty of three counts of rape.
In sentencing Smith at the County Court on Friday, Judge Susen Pullen said the woman suffered considerably after the incident with the woman saying she would “never be whole again”.
The judge agreed with prosecutors it was a very serious rape.
“You are to be sentenced as a serious sex offender,” Judge Pullen said.
Smith pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting a child in relation to an incident in Wendouree between June and December, 2012.
He was 51 when he kissed a 10-year-old girl on the lips and watched her having a bath.
The court was told Smith had lived in Maryborough before he moved to Ballarat in 2003-2004 where he was involved with sport clubs and the Haddon Church of Christ.
In an earlier plea hearing, defence barrister Matthew Page urged the court not to give his client a crushing sentence.
He said Smith would experience hardship in custody due to health issues but his poor health could be addressed while in custody.
Mr Page said it was Smith’s first time in custody and he had demonstrated some rehabilitation by not offending for six years.
The prosecution noted the offending occurred in a public place and was a very serious incident of rape.
Smith was sentenced to eight years and three months in jail, with a non-parole period of six years. He will be a registered sex offender for eight years.
